2 Doppie - Charles I

Charles I of Gonzaga-Nevers inherited Mantua in 1627 through a contested succession that triggered the War of the Mantuan Succession, drawing France, Spain, and the Empire into a ruinous conflict that ended only with the Treaty of Cherasco in 1631. The duchy was sacked by Imperial troops in 1630 — one of the most destructive episodes of the Thirty Years' War in northern Italy — and much of the city's accumulated wealth was stripped or destroyed. That this gold issue was produced across such a compressed and violent window makes surviving examples genuinely scarce.

Charles died in 1637, leaving a duchy financially and demographically hollowed out.